Daniel,

> 	Makes it difficult for me to know if I'm going into an area that
> someone else is working on, or wondering if something I want 
> to do will be broke by a unknown, not discussed Squeak Central project.

So why don't you just plainly ask what you want to know?! We're more than
happy to answer questions but there is already a lot of traffic on the list
and sometimes those projects are way off the general interest (e.g., like
trying to compile an early version of J3 using a Microsoft compiler) which
are better communicated to those few interested people. We don't necessarily
post *everything* to the list.

> 	I want to give Morphic some robust REAL widgets, bulletproof and
> reliable. I found myself tearing out a lot of cruft.
> 
> 	But...
> 	Is someone of the SC group working on this?

Scott is most actively working on everything that's (end-) user related.
However, as we need more things we just do them one at a time. There's
nobody here who would focus on a big widget framework - in the sense that
it's different from the general Morphic framework which itself defines (more
than) a framework in which widgets can be built.

> 	What is the current EXACT status of Balloon 2D, 

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the 'exact' status. It's working.

For the larger picture: I'm not planning to do any actual enhancements to
the current version. It'll be bugfixes only so don't expect any new stuff.
That's part of a different project which is - in short - a merger of Balloon
2D and 3D. Or at least that's the plan. If you're heavily into low-level
graphics rendering I can give you the full story, but from the user's point
of view the major differences will be: Faster, better quality (anti-aliasing
and transparency at virtually no cost) and possibly more primitives (e.g.,
cubic curves or, if I'm totally crazy, NURBS). There is no exact timeline
for this project yet.

If that's not what you were asking for then please be EXACT about what you
want to know ;-) 

> and would this affect
> my implementation of Squeak Widgets?

I don't know anything about your implementation so I can't answer that
question. If you're asking if we will rip out the entire support for vector
graphics then the answer is: No. Otherwise please ask your question a little
more concrete.

> 	Rumbles have appeared that "Morphic may not be the way 
> to go, we're working on something better". Yes? And?

... and the ultimate answer to this question is: We don't know (yet). There
are many aspects in Morphic which are tremendously helpful, there are many
others that are awfully nice and there are some that we don't like as much
(except, of course, using global coordinates which is a bug and not an
aspect ;-) If an incredible new idea comes along that would keep all (or
most) of the good aspects, that get's rid of (a few of) the not-so-good
aspects and offers a new horizon I think we'd go for it. Though definitely
not in a way that would leave people out there in the cold. MVC, for
instance, is in a way dead (whoops, I think the agreed Monthy Python term
was 'sleeping' ;-) but it's still in the image and a lot of effort has been
taken to make some of the new stuff work in MVC (even Morphic!).

> 	At least with linux, developers of add-ons can keep 
> track of what the core team of developers is doing, and plan 
> their coding accordingly, writing patches and updating their 
> drivers as needed as the central code undergoes changes.

You are confusing a couple of things here. In terms of Squeak, a driver
would be a primitive. There are a number of well-established rules for this
that keep the old stuff very well running. What you are talking about here
is much more of the higher level view. And there, things are a little bit
different than in the kernel drivers - even in the Linux development world.
As an example, what Window manager will ultimately win?!

> 	Here? No clue, except for some musty OLD pages on the 
> Squeak wiki.

Not sure if they are really *that* rusty. If you look at Squeak.org you
won't find any very recent changes but that doesn't mean we're not updating
it. It means that we still have the same global goals and are steadily
addressing one issue after another on our way towards these goals.

> Nothing, I have no clue if what I do will be broken in a year by a
> suprise SC code release. I don't mind it being broken, but the work
> could be done over time if I was kept abreast of SC design plans....

Then again, please ask your questions. Ask them at the level you need to
know so that we can give the answers you need.

  Andreas